Early on in Derek Owusu’s coming-of-age debut, the first novel to be published by Stormzy’s publishing imprint, Merky Books, the protagonist recalls the difficulties he faced as a child learning the art of handwriting. “Cursive presents as the RP of pen to paper; I envy that dexterity denied me, the first difference of ability I noticed between myself and others. My foster mum finds pages of failed attempts, notes of a voice failing speech therapy […] straining imprinting on paper. She forces me to look at my writing, pointing at sentence after sentence, her finger finally resting on a tear absorbed, covering my shame.”
Here, some of Owusu’s primary interests are made plain: the determined struggle for self-expression, the presentation of a nascent yet powerful self-loathing, a sense of the self being shaped by adversity. Notwithstanding the brilliant recent efforts of Inua Ellams, Kayo Chingonyi and Guy Gunaratne, within contemporary British literature it is still uncommon to find these ideas about the brittleness of identity considered from the perspective of young black male characters. It is equally rare to find these concerns handled so unflinchingly.
That Reminds Me is the story of K, a boy born to Ghanaian parents in London. It consists of five chronological sections, each introduced by the narrator making an enigmatic declaration to Anansi, the trickster of west African folklore, about the challenges and pleasures of storytelling. Each section is made up of fragments – some just a paragraph long – and, taken together, they tell the complex tale of K’s maturation.
As a child, K is fostered and finds himself in an unfamiliar rural landscape. In time, he comes to feel at home there. Eventually, he is returned to his birth family, and to the very different context of working-class British Ghanaian life in 1990s Tottenham; a world of pirate videos, gospel, Kwik Save and corned beef stew. K grapples with the legacies of abandonment and feelings of alienation in this new setting. Estranged from the noise and boisterousness of his primary school playground, K is left to “dig a stick in the grass, trying to create a grave for ants” while others blithely play football.
In rhythmic, slippery prose, this slim Bildungsroman aims to capture the growing K’s ever-shifting attitude towards his blackness and heritage, his multifaceted relationships with his parents, battles with alcoholism and fluctuating mental health. The irony of the title of the fourth section, “Construction”, is bitter, given that the subject here is on K’s psychological unravelling and literal acts of bodily incision that threaten his sense of wholeness. In these pages, Owusu chronicles K’s self-harming and the compulsion, guilt and relief he feels. The intense scrutiny of detail is, of course, uncomfortable, but the commitment to the microscopic recording of experience gives the narration a uniquely poetic texture.
When the writing operates in this highly focused mode, as Owusu engages with the concrete minutiae of lived reality, That Reminds Me is especially powerful. K’s mother works as a cleaner at a local school, and his musings on her attitude to her job – “she is so attentive to the floor, like wiping food from her child’s face” – are expressed with real tenderness. A simple moment when the grown-up K gives a young black boy in the street coins so he can buy sweets like his white friends is revelatory. Told in unadorned sentences, this fleeting encounter speaks volumes about K’s perceptiveness, sensitivity and desire for connectedness. The same is true of a beautifully crystalline anecdote in which he helps an elderly Ghanaian stranger with her luggage on the tube. When the fragments mine the inner lives of those surrounding K, the writing often sings with particular feeling and clarity.
The title of Owusu’s first work of fiction conjures up ideas of the derivative or allusive – “that reminds me …”. In fact, in the sensitivity of its approach and its impressionistic quality, it is a singular achievement. Many may find its subject matter unremittingly bleak. Some readers will question the efficacy of the framing device, the statements delivered to an impassive Anansi. Others might find some of the lyricism and stylistic innovations distracting rather than illuminating. But there is a palpable charge and welcome freshness to the voice here that is undeniable.
• Michael Donkor’s Hold is published by 4th Estate. That Reminds Me by Derek Owusu is published by Merky (£12.99). To order a copy go to guardianbookshop.com or call 020-3176 3837. Free UK p&p over £10, online orders only. Phone orders min p&p of £1.99.
